Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention relate to techniques for relationship resolution. More specifically, embodiments of the invention relate to pruning a relationship graph of identities for relationship resolution.
Description of the Related Art
Identity resolution applications typically perform one or both of identity resolution and relationship resolution. Identity resolution attempts to answer the question “Who is who?”—i.e., determines whether multiple records that appear to describe different identities actually refer to the same entity (e.g., individual). For example, records identifying two women with different last names may in fact refer to the same woman having both a familial surname and a married surname. Relationship resolution attempts to answer the question “Who knows whom?” in order to determine benefits and/or risks of relationships among identities, such as customers, employees, vendors, and so forth, e.g., by cross-referencing data from various sources. For example, a relationship may be identified between two individuals sharing a common address or telephone number. An example of an identity resolution application is Relationship Resolution, available from International Business Machines Corp. (IBM®) of Armonk, N.Y.
An identity resolution application typically traverses a relationship graph of identities to identify relationships of interest. The relationship graph may include nodes, each node representing an identity (such as an individual, an organization, etc.). In traversing the relationship graph, certain nodes of the relationship graph may turn out to be very “popular” (i.e., have many links to other nodes). The value in traversing through a node with many relationships is typically diminished. For example, an identity resolution application typically follows every link of a relationship graph. Following every link from a node with many links, however, may hinder performance of the identity resolution application while adding little value to the traversal.